There are cash-strapped governments and there are broke governments. And then there's Zimbabwe, which, after paying last week's government salaries, has just $217 left in the bank. No, we didn't forget any zeroes to the end of that figure. Zimbabwe, the country that's home to some of the world's largest platinum and diamond reserves, literally has the same financial standing as a 14-year-old girl after a really good birthday party.

(snip)

So it seems. However, Zimbabwe is hardly a stranger to financial hyperbole. The economy started to come apart at the seams in 2000, when President Robert Mugabe seized the land of over 4,000 white-owned farmers, effectively dismantling the country's agriculture industry. Over the course of the next decade, the country spiraled into an extended period of hyperinflation, the likes of which the world almost never sees.

(snip)

Sound familiar? And not just agriculture. Rhodesia was the bread basket of Africa. Then, with Mugabe in power, it became Zimbabwe - the basket case of Africa.

We're on our way. When America is bankrupt and the world is in chaos, hussein will loot whatever is left, and retire to Kenya.

01-31-2013, 08:46 PM

JB

Taking assets from one group of citizens and giving it to another group of citizens resulted in failure? I guess it's a lesson we'll have to learn ourselves.

02-01-2013, 11:59 AM

Starbuck

I have watched Rhodesia become Zimbabwe. I have talked to Rhodesians (white) who were displaced by the new Zimbabwean government.

The people of Zimbabwe may not deserve the type of government the Zimbabweans have voted themselves into, but, like Iran, it is their own doing.
They are guilty of putting race above all else, which, ironically, is the very thing they thought they were correcting when they kicked the white people out.